Blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law

Month: September 2013

  • Join I·CON: Debate!

    In our current issue we feature an I·CON: Debate! on strategic reasoning in the Israeli Supreme Court. In a landmark case, the Court decided to set a principle while delaying a concrete ruling until the legislature fleshes out particular legal arrangements in accordance with this principle.

  • Is Proportionality Culturally Based?

    —Moshe Cohen-Eliya and Iddo Porat, College of Law and Business, Ramat Gan, Israel In a recently published book Proportionality and Constitutional Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2013) we look closely at constitutional culture centering on two crucial concepts of constitutional law: balancing and proportionality.

  • I·CON 11 Issue 3: Editorial

    The Arab Fall? Spring is meant to be followed by summer, when buds turn into flowers, when promise and hope turn into reality. This kind of summer seems to have skipped Egypt and the Fall is upon us. The only thing that I find surprising, or perhaps not so surprising, is the hand wringing over the military coup d’état, a definite setback for constitutional democracy.

  • National Parliaments in the EU: Biting the Subsidiarity Bait?

    —Davor Jancic, British Academy Newton Fellow, Department of Law, London School of Economics and Political Science The parliamentarization of the European Union has been hailed as one of the hallmarks of the Treaty of Lisbon. Besides empowering the European Parliament, the Member States’ national parliaments have been endowed with a series of competences in EU decision making.

  • New Scholarship Review: Interview with Federico Fabbrini

    –Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In this installment of I-CONnect’s interview series, I speak with Federico Fabbrini about his forthcoming paper on The Euro-Crisis and the Courts: Judicial Review and the Political Process in Comparative Perspective. In his paper, Professor Fabbrini explores the increasing involvement of courts in the fiscal and economic affairs of the state, with a specific focus on Europe.

  • Preview of I·CON’s next issue (Table of Contents)

    I.CON  Volume 11 Issue 3  Table of Contents     Editorial Articles  Virgílio Afonso da Silva, Deciding without deliberating Panu Minkkinen, Political constitutionalism vs. political constitutional theory: Law, power and politics     Symposium: Constitutional Transitions in the Middle East Sujit Choudhry, Introduction Mohammad Fadel, Judicial legitimacy and the Legitimacy of Islamic State Law Clark Lombardi, Reconciling islamization and democratization Asli Bali, Courts and Constitutional Transition: Lessons from the Turkish Case Turkuler Isiksel, Between text and context: Turkey’s tradition of authoritarian constitutionalism Ozan Varol, The Turkish “Model” of Civil-Military Relations   I·CON: Debate!  Haim Sandberg, Strategic considerations behind normative explanations: Lessons from Israel’s supreme court takings case Barak Medina, Strategic considerations behind normative explanations: A reply to Haim Sandberg  Haim Sandberg, Strategic considerations behind normative explanations: A rejoinder to Barak Medina   I.CON

  • I.CON for political scientists

    The International Journal of Constitutional Law (I.CON) publishes scholarship in the areas of political science, international studies and law & society. We have put together a collection of relevant articles and symposia from the last two years and made them freely available online.

  • Note on the Provisional Constitution of the Federal Republic of Somalia

    —Antonios Kouroutakis, University of Oxford, Faculty of Law The Provisional Constitution of the Federal Republic of Somalia (the Constitution) is the supreme law of Federal Republic of Somalia (Somalia). The drafting process occurred under the auspices of United Nations, and on 1 August 2012, the National Constitutional Assembly approved the Constitution by an overwhelming majority.

  • New Scholarship Review: Interview with Vanessa MacDonnell

    –Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In this installment of I-CONnect’s interview series, I speak with Vanessa MacDonnell about her forthcoming paper on The Constitution as Framework for Governance. In her paper, Professor MacDonnell proposes a new way of thinking about the role of government, specifically with regard to its affirmative obligations to advance and secure constitutional rights.

  • Book Review/Response: Paul Blokker, Jiri Priban and Bogusia Puchalska on Civic Constitutionalism

    [Editor’s Note: In this installment of I•CONnect’s Book Review/Response Series, Jiří Přibáň and Bogusia Puchalska each review Paul Blokker’s recently-published book New Democracies in Crisis? A Comparative Constitutional Study of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Paul Blokker then responds to the reviews]   Review by Jiří Přibáň –Jiří Přibáň, Cardiff Law School, reviewing Paul Blokker, New Democracies in Crisis?